There’s something arbitrary about spotting “trends” at the end of the year, but 2014 actually did bring some clarity in areas such as the marketing value of social media (a lot less than folks thought), and the validity of many traditional marketing assumptions about growth (they’re wrong, and we also know what approaches should replace them).

It’s tough for most companies to shift paradigms and take advantage of these trends–which means those who do embrace them can steal a march on their slower moving competition.

So, here are the key growth trends for 2015.

Customer Content: Still King With a Growing Kingdom

When it comes to business growth, content will continue to rise in importance. And among all content, customer content—customer stories in particular—will be king. Customers–your buyers’ peers–are the one source they  most want to hear from or about (not your sales and marketing people).

 The question is, how do you effectively broadcast these to your market in 2015? Which leads to my next several trends. Many of these come from developments in consumer markets—which are often bellwethers for B2B markets.

 Social Media: Back to Earth

The always-dubious notion that “broadcasting” to markets though social media would create mass movements toward products is now officially dead. Re: Facebook. People don’t view social media as a broadcast medium. They view it as a tool for personal interaction. End of story. (Social media isn’t social either, but that’s another story). Social media can amplify and extend content life (see the next subhead), but look elsewhere for the big push you need first through a broadcast medium.

 Which brings me to a resurrection.

Broadcast TV Is Back

Pronounced dead five years ago by social media gurus, TV is back with a vengeance. Smart consumer brands like P&G are finding that TV is more effective than ever at broadcasting messages out to markets. Once that’s achieved, then people will (might!) start sharing on social media with their friends in ways that keep the campaign going.

 Btw, short attention spans? Not necessarily. P&G has experimented with two-minute advertisements, to great effect. It’s not about the time. It’s about the content.

Get Personal With Your Rock Star Advocates and Influencers

The hot new technology in 2015 will be “H2H” (human to human relationships). In many industries, companies who develop deep H2H relationships with their top customer advocates and influencers–what I call “rock stars”– are better positioned for rapid growth.

• Companys’ mobile apps will increasingly provide access to a human at the tap of a screen, when customers want this, as Don Peppers nicely points out. (Don is keynoting the 2015 Summit on Customer Engagement).
• Fast growth B2B firms are getting more skilled at building 1-to-1 relationships, even when they have hundreds of customer references.
• Other firms are developing deep relationships with “marquee” customer executives, using creative approaches to forming advisory boards, for example, and learning to create advocacy experiences their rock stars will value and enjoy.

Customer Communities Rising

For companies, such as B2B firms whose markets are small or don’t lend themselves to TV, the task is to find your best broadcast media for reaching your market. Building your own customer communities is a powerful option. People were agog at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce this year, which registered some 130,000+ users, prospects, vendors, developers, etc. in San Francisco. But Mark Benioff has been putting customers together with prospects since day one of the company, starting with his “City Tour” events around the US. The early ones drew only a handful of people, but from the first, these little communities were effective engines for growth of the firm and laid the foundation for what would become Dreamforce.

In my experience, more companies can develop powerful customer communities than think they can. Communities of peers draw buyers.

Btw, even consumer firms who can afford broadcast TV campaigns exploit the potential of customer communities. Think P&G’s BeingGirl. Or Harley Davidson’s “Garage Parties” that provide riding instruction to women—a much more attractive growth market now than middle age suburban men—and now attract about 10,000 women a year.

 Marketing’s Task: Get Known to Your Entire Market, Get Remembered, and Be Available

Research star Byron Sharp @profbyron is compiling remarkable, and well designed, research that blows many familiar marketing canards out of the water. If you want to grow robustly, for example, avoid niche strategies. Get known by your entire market. Apple illustrates this: it grew nicely when it sold computers to designers and artists. But Apple created exponential growth–when Steve Jobs decided to develop a music player for the entire market. Same with cell phones.

 Branding: Back to Earth Too

The rather overblown notion that customers have a “relationship” with your brand is thankfully fading away. Call this the decline of “brand narcissisim.” Customers rarely think about anyone’s brand, including yours.  And even when customers do buy, whatever ardor they feel at the time fades quickly. So get over it, and reduce your expectations for what your brand needs to do. Brands in 2015 just need to get noticed, and remembered. That’s it. But that’s more than enough to spur robust growth as long as you get noticed and remembered by enough people.

 Customer Experience: You’re Probably Trying Too Hard

Of course, you can’t make a product or service that’s lousy. And when products are truly innovative and amazing like the iPhone, companies are amply rewarded. But the rewards from great innovation and design are short lived. Innovators can’t keep rolling out products of the century; competitors catch up. Companies should create a solid customer experience, but so you really need another 5 points for your Net Promoter Score? Or would those resources be better spent letting your target market know about and remember you? 

The Opportunity for Stealing a March on Your Competitors in 2015

To sum up, use the customers you’ve got to create memorable stories that will get you known, and remembered. Develop deep, personal relationships with your rock star advocates and influencers. Figure out how to broadcast their stories to your entire market, affordably. And then be sure you have the goods where and when the buyer wants them, when she’s ready to buy.

A simple strategy, one that’s research based, and one that’s probably not being followed by your competitors in 2015. What are you waiting for?